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  • How to do a Website Audit to Improve SEO & Conversions

    When was the last time you gave your website a checkup? If you’ve never before audited your website, it’s been a while since you have, or you’re planning a website redesign in the near future, use this post as your go-to website audit checklist to make sure your website is primed for maximum SEO and conversion results.

    Below, let’s learn what a website audit is, why it’s important, and how to use the information to improve your SEO and conversions.

    Before we dive into the things you should be keeping an eye out for as you’re auditing your website, let’s review some of the benefits of doing one. Here are some of the top benefits from a marketing perspective:
    1. Website Performance Optimization
    Website audits usually evaluate a site not only for its content but also for its technical performance.
    As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure, assess how friendly your website is to search engines, and determine how easy it is for users to navigate and intuitively find content on your website.
    2. Search Engine Optimization
    By conducting a website audit, you’ll be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g. keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.
    It will also allow you to re-focus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second. This will safeguard you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won’t be applying misguided practices just to show up at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
    3. Conversion Rate Optimization
    Website audits also enable you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion. As a result, you’ll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads so you can add relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages so you can optimize them to boost conversions.
    4. Competitive Analysis
    Conducting a website audit will allow you to compare your website to your competitor’s. You can analyze how well you’re ranking against competitors for keywords and determine potential new sources of revenue.
    You can use tools, like HubSpot’s website grader, to perform an audit on your competitor’s websites to gather more insights. You can learn how your competitors are attracting visitors and see how they’re garnering conversions.
    Ultimately, this will help you brainstorm new tactics and strategies for your site.
    5. Identify Issues
    When you do a website audit, you’ll be able to find issues that are hurting your SEO and conversions. Perhaps it’s broken links, hidden content, long page load speed times, or more. Identifying these issues will help you repair issues that are diverting traffic.
    As you can see, assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.
    Now that you know what a website audit is and why you should do one, let’s look at how to conduct one.

    1. Run Your Website URL through a Site Audit Tool
    Before you get started, you’ll want to find a website auditing tool that can help you analyze how your website is performing. When you use site audit software to run your site through, you can get specific recommendations and test how your page is performing.
    2. Find Technical Errors
    Once you’ve put your site through an auditing tool, you’ll want to look for technical errors. These could be related to performance, SEO, mobile, security, and more. The technical site structure and setup of your site play a large role in how well your website performs for customers.
    3. Identify SEO Problems
    Now, you’ll want to look at SEO-related issues so you can improve your ranking on search engines. This might mean looking at meta descriptions, reviewing image alt text, and more.
    4. Analyze Design and UX
    One of the things I like to look for when conducting a website audit is the user experience. How is this design working for your customers? Some software has heatmaps of what parts of your design draw the most attention and what users are reading. This type of analysis will let you know how the overall design and user experience are impacting your visitors.
    5. Assess Website Content
    A website audit will help you assess website content including blogs, website pages, etc. You’ll want to know how your current pages are stacking up. Ask yourself, “Is my content ranking well in search engines?” and “Is my on-page SEO and performance aligned with my traffic numbers?”
    6. Generate a Checklist of All Site Issues and Recommended Fixes
    Lastly, when you’re conducting a website audit, it’s important to have a place where you put a summary of all your findings. List out the site issues and recommended fixes, so that you can send that information to the appropriate teams.
    Now let’s dive in even more specifically so you know what to be checking for in this website audit.
    Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website
    But first, enter your website into HubSpot’s Website Grader — this will give you a general overview of your website’s strengths so you can gauge your focus on each of the assessments that follow in this article.

    How’d you do? Got an idea of which website audit benefits you need the most? Here we go.
    1. Website Performance Assessment
    In the first part of your website audit, you should be focusing on how users navigate your website — from your homepage to blog posts, to landing pages, and any related content in between.
    Make a list of the pages on your website and ask yourself the following questions to evaluate them for optimization opportunities:
    Is Your Website Optimized for Maximum Usability?
    The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate leads and, ultimately, customers. But only if your website performs well.
    As I’m sure you can imagine, just having a website does not guarantee results. As part of determining the overall efficiency of your website, your audit should check to make sure your site is designed with your visitors in mind. The design and overall navigability of your website should correspond with what a person would come to the site to seek out, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, etc. This will largely depend on your individual business.
    The main goal here is to make it easy for people to get the information they’re looking for. As a result, you’ll likely see conversion rates improve on their own.
    To audit your website for usability, consider the following:

    Are all the main value propositions of our business easily accessible via our main navigations/menu items?
    Do we have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout? Make sure pages aren’t too cluttered; littered with ads, CTAs, or links; or void of internal links altogether.
    Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout processes intuitive? Are there a ton of distractions along the way that could be creating friction for your site visitors?

    You might also consider doing some user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you’re effectively surfacing the content they’re looking for, and that they find it easy to navigate to the parts of your website they’re interested in.
    How Is Your Website’s Overall Speed?
    Are there excessive page sizes and/or long page load and server response times? Does your site go down frequently? Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up, all of which can drastically improve your site speed.
    Ultimately, fast-loading and optimized pages will lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions. To quickly check a web page’s load time, download MozBar, a toolbar by Moz that you can attach to your browser for simple page analysis every time you visit a website.
    2. SEO Assessment
    Optimizing the performance of your website is crucial to holding onto visitors, but the above question isn’t the only one you should be asking. You should also audit the content you’re publishing to ensure it’s actually solving your visitors’ problems.
    Is Your Website Content High Quality?
    As you evaluate your content for quality, think about it from your target audience’s perspective. Did this information leave me satisfied? Did it answer all of my questions? Does it give me all the resources relevant to this topic? Do I know what to do next?
    Keep in mind quality content should appeal to the interests, needs, and problems of your buyer personas; be interesting and well-written, provide valuable, thorough, and detailed information about a particular topic; and leave the reader with next steps (such as calls-to-action, links to resources, etc.).
    If you’re still not sure if your content is high quality, evaluate it with this checklist:” How to Tell if Your Marketing Content Is Actually Valuable.”
    Is Your Website Search Engine Optimized?
    Make sure all your web pages are following on-page SEO best practices. To audit your content for on-page SEO, conduct a keyword analysis in which you do the following:

    Consult your analytics to review keyword performance. Which keywords are giving you the biggest gains in traffic and leads?
    Assess how well you’re factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much relevant content are you adding to your website to target those keywords?
    Review basic on-page SEO elements like URLs, page titles, meta description, and copy. Make sure keywords are included where relevant.

    To help you conduct an on-page SEO audit of your content, read the “Step-by-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO,” which also includes a free downloadable on-page SEO template to keep you on track.
    3. Conversion Rate Assessment
    While high-quality, search engine optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it’s what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts. Unless of course, you don’t care about conversions (ha!).
    Is Your Website Optimized for Lead Generation and Conversions?
    This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages play a major role in the performance of your website. Not only do they offer you opportunities to capture visitors’ information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and your brand.
    To audit your website for maximum conversion potential, ask yourself the following questions:

    How many marketing offers do I have in my content arsenal to gate behind landing pages?
    Do I have a variety of marketing offers that appeal to all my different buyer personas?
    Do I have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with?

    How optimized are those landing pages?
    Do I have conversion opportunities for visitors in varying stages of the funnel?
    Am I using calls-to-action effectively? Am I missing opportunities to include calls to action on various pages of my website?

    To learn more about CTA selection, check out our post, ” How to Select the Right CTA for Every Page on Your Website.”
    4. Technical Assessment
    Once you’ve addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it’s time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency — just be sure to do your homework first.
    Keep in mind that there may be some carry-over from the three assessments above — website performance, SEO, and conversion rate. The technical evaluation, however, addresses all three to maximize the user experience (UX).
    Here’s what you should be looking for in the technical assessment stage of your website audit …
    Is Your Website Design Responsive?
    Does your website have a responsive design? Meaning, is it a mobile-friendly website? The usage of smartphones to access the internet is only growing. As of 2017, mobile devices account for half of all web page views worldwide. As a result, websites must be compatible with that growing demand.
    For more on mobile compatibility, check out our “Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering Mobile Marketing.”
    Is Your Website Error Message Free?
    Are response code errors popping up all over your website where there shouldn’t be any? Calling out 302-, 404-, and 500-level response codes can be useful to tell users that something’s wrong.
    However, having this happen is also an indication that someone isn’t cleaning up broken links and, as a result, leading users to dead ends. Find those error messages and clean up your broken links. Tools like Google’s Webmaster Tools or Xenu’s Link Sleuth can be very helpful for this.
    Are Your Website URLs Optimized?
    Does your site have URLs of excessive length due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain session IDs and/or include tons of dynamic parameters? In some cases, these URLs are difficult for search engines to index and result in lower clickthrough rates from search results.
    Does Your Website Have Too Much Flash or JavaScript?
    Identify areas of your navigation that are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines have challenges reading and accessing these, which could prevent your site from getting indexed.
    Furthermore, these elements present problems from a usability perspective. Visitors are often looking for a very specific piece of information when visiting your site; if they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation, you’re going to have a pretty frustrated visitor on your hands.
    Is Your Site Structure Optimized for Search Engines?
    We already talked about site structure as it relates to accessing content and usability for users, but it’s also important to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not internally linked to other pages on your site, those pages are less likely to be indexed.
    Are You Defining How Your Web Pages Are Crawled and Indexed by Search Engines?
    This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots files and tags to sitemaps. These measures are a way for you to guide search engines toward your website’s most useful content.
    Robots Files or Tags
    The robots meta tag lets you utilize a granular, page-specific approach to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a given page.
    The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that allows you to specify how you would like your site to be crawled. Before crawling a website, search engine crawlers will generally request the robots.txt file from a server. Within the robots.txt file, you can include sections for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions (“directives”) that let them know which parts should or should not be crawled.
    Public and XML Sitemaps
    Your website should also have public and XML Sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review the pages of your site, like the index of a book.
    The XML Sitemap is for search engines to review pages that get added to your site, all in one place. The usual location of a sitemap.xml file is www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml. The XML Sitemap is something every website should have; it offers an opportunity to tell Google and the other search engines what pages on your site you want to be crawled and indexed.
    While search engines don’t guarantee they will abide by your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has proven time and time again that XML Sitemaps help provide insurance that your pages are found, and found faster — especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.
    Are You Defining Canonicalization of Content?
    The canonicalization of your website content is the final major technical consideration to make. To gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results, and to minimize issues related to duplicate content, it’s recommended that you pick a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page.
    You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. One such way is to set the Canonical Tag (rel=”canonical”) in an HTTP header of a page. Be sure to have someone check that the Canonical Tag is properly implemented across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn’t point to the homepage.
    Website Auditing Checklist
    Now, before you get started, you might consider using this basic website auditing checklist to ensure you review all the necessary elements of your site’s performance, SEO, mobile, and security issues.

    Website Audit Example
    To pull all this together, I decided to run a website audit on one of my favorite bloggers, Christina Galbato.
    This website is performing well. SEO and Mobile are scoring very highly. The main areas for improvement for this site would be performance and security.

    You might be asking yourself, “What does that mean?” Well, let’s dive in a little deeper.
    In each section, the website grader will let you know what you’re doing well and what you could improve on. See the SEO section below.

    Then, the grader gives overall recommendations to improve your site overall. As you can see in the example, you’ll see a table to compare your current site to the recommendations.

    Conducting a Website Audit
    It’s important to establish an audit framework early on. Ask yourself questions ideally centered around gauging “How am I doing?” These questions may also include things like, “How does this compare to others, especially my competitors?”
    Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

  • Top 5 Lightning Component Gems of Salesforce Winter’22 Release!

    The Lightning Component modern framework is a User Interface framework to develop dynamic web apps for mobile and desktop devices. As is the case with each release, the latest Winter’22 release is packed with rich features including, the newly added Lightning Component features! Currently, the Winter’22 release is available under
    The post Top 5 Lightning Component Gems of Salesforce Winter’22 Release! appeared first on Automation Champion.

  • 3 NEW Sales Cloud Features to Boost Revenue Intelligence

    Salesforce has announced their next wave of Sales Cloud and Revenue Cloud additions, which focus on revenue intelligence, sales enablement, and subscription management. These will be showcased in the Sales Cloud Main Show at Dreamforce ’21. Hot on the heels of Salesforce’s Slack integrations announcement… Read More

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    Salesforce image formula fields display image icons to Salesforce users according to the field value/s a record has, instead of calculating a number, or outputting a string of text. Simply speaking, the formula statements will ask: “if this equals [some value], show [image A], if… Read More

  • Introducing Email Academy — a Free Learning Platform for Marketers

    We’re thrilled to launch Email Academy — a new on-demand learning platform designed to give marketers of all skill levels the skills they need to stay sharp and stay ahead in an ever-evolving email marketing world.
    Being a “customer-centric” company may sound like an overplayed cliché, but at Campaign Monitor, we really mean it. We absolutely love our customers. 
    We’re constantly learning from and inspired by what they do. And, as a team, we’re all geared towards their success — doing whatever we can to help them achieve their goals, whatever they may be.
    And that’s why, today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Email Academy, a free online resource for marketers to level up their email marketing skills.
    In the ever-evolving world of email marketing, it’s important to constantly sharpen your skills and keep them up to date. And Email Academy is designed to do just that. 
    Whether marketing is your full-time job, or one of the many hats you wear, Email Academy is here to equip you with the tools you need to grow in your career, build your business, and become a more effective marketer.
    Here are some of the in-demand email marketing skills you can look forward to learning in Email Academy.


    Email courses for beginners
    If you’re new to email marketing, or need to brush up on some basics, we have three different courses designed specifically for you. These courses are a great launching point for anyone early in their marketing career.
    Email marketing fundamentals
    In this course, you’ll cover all the basics of email marketing. Expect to walk away with a firm understanding of why email marketing is important, what the main types of marketing emails are, and how to understand your audience.
    Email design basics
    Design is essential to running effective email campaigns, and this course will help you get started. Learn design best practices for sending emails that are on-brand, effective, and meet accessibility standards.
    Subscriber data management
    Data management is a hot topic in the digital marketing world, and one that nobody can afford to ignore. Enroll in this course and learn how to manage subscriber data, how to grow and maintain your list, and best practices for segmenting audiences.
    Advanced email courses
    If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our time in the email marketing world, it’s the importance of continually learning and developing new skills. With that in mind, if you’re an experienced email marketer looking to upskill, have some amazing course options for you.
    List growth tactics
    Growth is the objective of almost every marketer. In this course, we’ll cover best practices for growing your subscriber list in a reliable, scalable, and ethical way.
    Email personalization tactics
    The days of batch-and-blast email sends are over. Learn how to send relevant, personalized emails that your subscribers will engage with.
    Email data and reporting
    Having trouble measuring the success of your email campaigns? Enroll in this course to learn all about the industry-standard email metrics, how to interpret them in the context of a campaign, and tactics for improving your email metrics over time.
    Email automation and triggers
    Timing is everything in email marketing, and automation is the key to making sure you’re reaching your subscribers with the right message at the right time. This course will cover standard automation journeys and how to build them.
    Deliverability best practices
    Deliverability may feel like the underbelly of the email marketing world, but it’s incredibly important. In this course, you’ll learn about what deliverability is, why it matters more than you think, and best practices to follow to make sure you don’t run into deliverability issues with your marketing campaigns.
    Become an early Email Academy graduate
    Whether you’re looking to land a job in email marketing, level up your skills and get promoted, or simply want to grow your business, Email Academy is the perfect place to start. This free course will teach you the relevant, in-demand skills you need to get started in email marketing today.
    And don’t forget to show people what you’ve learned! After completing a course, you’ll receive a certification to let current or prospective employers know that you have the skills to get the job done.
    Thank you, and happy learning!
    Ros de Vries, Customer Experience Programs Manager at Campaign Monitor
    Sign up for Email Academy for free today!
    The post Introducing Email Academy — a Free Learning Platform for Marketers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

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  • How to Improve Organizational Skills at Work

    When you’re working at a new job or trying to get a promotion, you need to be organized. While you might list organizational skills on your resume, putting that skill into action is a little harder.
    Having organizational skills means that you can meet deadlines and be efficient in your workflow management. In fact, organizational skills can be synonymous with energy and time management in most cases.

    All of these skills are very important in the workplace and potential employers want to make sure you can stay on top of things.
    In this post, we’ll dive deep into what organizational skills are, specific examples of what they look like in action, and how to develop organizational skills in the workplace.

    Organizational skills are about building structure, boosting productivity, and prioritizing the right tasks at the right time.
    The antithesis of organizational skills is procrastination, clutter, inefficiency, and miscommunication.
    Organizational skills mean you’re able to keep yourself calm while coming up with a scheduled plan. Many people with good organizational skills break up projects into smaller goals so they are easier to accomplish.
    Importance of Organizational Skills
    Organizational skills are important because they’ll help you get tasks done on time. These types of skills are important in the workplace because managers will see that you can handle your tasks, and have autonomy over your own projects. This will help you get promotions and references if you apply to new jobs in the future.
    If you don’t have a plan in place for how you’re going to accomplish something, it will be much harder for you to finish. You’ll need to be able to anticipate how long a task will take, what resources you’ll need to complete that task, and have the discipline to block out the necessary time to finish it.
    Organizational Skills on a Resume
    When you’re listing organizational skills on your resume, you might consider breaking it down into more specific sets of skills. Let’s dive into the examples below.
    Organizational Skills Example
    The best organizational skills to list on your resume include:

    Communication
    Time management
    Delegation
    Attention to detail
    Decision making
    Strategic planning
    Goal setting
    Creative thinking
    Problem-solving
    Productivity
    Managing priorities
    Teamwork/collaboration
    Deadlines
    Scheduling
    Conflict management
    Office management

    1. Own your calendar.
    The best way to develop organizational skills is to truly own your calendar. Block off time where you need to get work done. Then, create a schedule for yourself that is realistic to stick to. It’s hard to stay organized when you have random meetings popping up on your calendar.
    Additionally, it’s important to know how you work best. For example, I like to have meetings back-to-back because it’s hard for me to get work done in 30-minute increments between meetings. I want all my meetings at the same time, so I can block working time and then meeting time.
    2. Make lists.
    When you have a lot on your to-do list, you can make separate lists for what needs to get done and when. I usually have a running to-do list where I’ll add everything I need to do for the week. Then, I’ll break that down into daily to-do lists. You can organize your lists by tasks, meetings, reminders, etc.
    3. Figure out what tools will help you.
    Obviously, everyone works differently. That’s why it’s important to figure out how you work best. Do you like using a physical calendar or a digital calendar? Regardless, you’ll need tools to help you stay organized. Below is a quick list of physical and digital tools to help you get started.
    Physical Tools

    Planner
    Calendar
    Notepad
    Folders
    Journals

    Digital Tools

    Google Calendar
    Trello
    Asana
    Evernote
    Teuxdeux

    4. Communicate with your team.
    Another way to develop organizational skills is to communicate with your team. It’s important to communicate your plan of action to any necessary stakeholders. Additionally, communication will help keep you accountable.
    If you’re working on a project with several people, you can communicate updates on your part of the project as they occur or at the end of the day. This is a great way to keep the team organized and on task.
    5. Declutter your workspace.
    Lastly, to truly be organized, your workspace should be free from clutter. While not everyone likes to keep everything neat and tidy all the time, you should still only have necessary items on your desk so you don’t get distracted. This will help productivity and organization overall. When you need to find a list or an item, it’s important that you know where it is and it doesn’t get lost.
    Organizational Skills in the Workplace
    Now you might be wondering, “How can I use these organizational skills in the workplace?” and “How can I highlight these skills?”
    The first step is to list these skills on your resume when you’re applying for jobs. You can say “organizational skills” or you can list other skills, like the ones above, to be even more specific.
    If you’re in a job interview, think of stories and examples of how you remained organized and how it helped you solve a problem or complete a project successfully. It’s important to discuss how you scheduled your time, how you handle multiple assignments, and how you delegate tasks.
    While a potential employer might not ask specific questions about organizational skills, you can highlight these stories in questions like “What are your strengths?” and “Why are you a good fit for this role?”
    Once you’re working for a company, you can highlight your organizational skills during projects or meetings. It’s a good idea to use these skills whenever you can because it’s sure to impress your boss and help you move forward in your career.
    Organizational skills don’t just mean that you keep to-do lists. It means you manage your time efficiently, you’re productive, can solve problems, and think critically. That’s why it’s important to develop your organizational skills whenever you can.

  • Data Mapping: What Is It Plus The Best Techniques and Tools

    You don’t want to waste time simply guessing what a prospect or customer wants and needs from your business or how they’ll react to a certain marketing campaign or strategy that you plan to implement.
    Rather, you can turn to the process of data-driven marketing to make informed decisions that are based on real data to ensure your marketing efforts are relevant to prospect and customer interests and behaviors.
    Now you might be thinking about the fact that your business has a large volume of complex data that are dispersed across multiple sources — this is where data mapping comes in handy.

    Data Mapping
    Data mapping is a key part of data management and data integration. That’s because it ensures you’re looking at and considering all of your data and doing so accurately — in other words, data mapping is what allows you to integrate your data from multiple sources.
    In this blog post, we’ll talk more about what data mapping is, why it’s useful, data mapping techniques, and data mapping tools.
    What is data mapping?
    Data mapping is the process of matching data fields or elements from a source, or sources, to their related data fields in another destination — it’s how you establish relationships between data models that are in different sources or systems. Data mapping software and tools automatically match data fields from one data source to another for you.
    Data mapping allows you to organize, distill, analyze, and understand vast amounts of data that live in various locations so you can draw conclusions and insights.
    Why is data mapping useful?
    Here are some more reasons why data mapping is both useful and necessary:

    Integrate, transform, and migrate data as well as create data warehouses easily.
    Establish direct relationships between your data across multiple sources at once.
    Ensure your data is high quality and accurate (data mapping software can automatically flag inconsistencies and data that isn’t high quality or accurate).
    Identify real-time trends and share data reports with team members both easily and efficiently.
    Ensure you’re getting the most out of your data and applying insights and learnings appropriately.
    Use data mapping software to simplify (and automate much of) the process of code-free data mapping.

    Data Mapping Examples
    A business like Amazon may use data mapping to accurately target you. They do this by pulling insights from your browsing habits, reviews, purchase history, and time on page. They can then pull and connect that data to/with data from other sources such as demographic information.
    By combining these types of data sources, Amazon has the necessary information to target you with certain products and personalize your shopping experience in a number of ways (e.g. based on challenges you may be facing, geographic location, experience level, interests, education, nationality, age, and more).
    Let’s consider another data mapping example — say you work for a TV network and you’re looking to organize TV shows on the network, actors who appear on the network, and actors within a show that appears on the network. The sharing of data between the three sources may look something like this:

    Data Mapping Techniques
    Within data mapping, there are three main techniques that are used — manual mapping, semi-automated mapping, and automated mapping. Let’s talk about what each of these techniques entails.
    1. Manual Data Mapping
    Manual data mapping requires professional coders and data mappers — IT will code and map your data sources. Although this is a heavy lift and requires professional help, it allows you to fully control and customize your maps.
    2. Semi-automated Data Mapping
    Semi-automated data mapping (or schema mapping) requires some coding knowledge and means your team will be moving between both manual and automated data mapping processes (hence the name of this technique).
    Data mapping software creates a connection between the data sources and then an IT professional reviews those connections and makes manual adjustments as needed.
    3. Automated Data Mapping
    Automated data mapping means a tool will take care of all aspects of the data mapping process for you, making it an ideal option, if you are not/ don’t have access to a coder. This type of software will typically allow for drag-and-drop mapping. You just need to learn how to use the tool (and pay for it).
    Speaking of the tools that will automate the process of data mapping for you, let’s review some of your options next.

    Data Mapping Tools
    Data mapping tools and software make the process of data mapping —including visualizing and interpreting your data — easier. There’s no code needed, they often have a drag-and-drop user interface (UI), and you can implement them on your team no matter your level of technical experience. Many data mapping tools also have the ability to help you with other data management tasks such as data migration.
    1. Bloomi

    Price: Free 30-day trial; contact for a quote.
    Bloomi, which is owned by Dell, is an iPaaS solution — that’s both cloud-native and scalable — that connects both cloud and on-premise data and applications. Design cloud-based integrations, which the tool refers to as Atoms. Then, you can begin transferring data between the cloud and your on-premise apps.
    Bloomi’s data mapping functionality translates electronic data interchange (EDI) for you. The tool has a drag-and-drop UI that makes data mapping easy as well as a library of available connectors so you can establish integrations quickly.
    2. Tableau

    Price: Free 30-day trial; $12-$70/ user/ mo.
    Tableau is a visual analytics and business intelligence platform with data management and data mapping tools. Whether your data is in spreadsheets, Apache Hadoop, databases, the cloud, etc., the platform allows you to connect and begin visualizing your data in seconds without code.
    Tableau regularly populates your most recent data (on a schedule that you can adjust). The drag-and-drop interface is easy to use and smart dashboards allow for effective data visualization. Lastly, you can easily share your data maps and dashboards with your team via mobile device for easy alignment and access.
    3. Astera

    Price: Free 14-day trial; contact for a quote.
    Astera is an enterprise data management software that uses visual interfaces to convert, map, and validate data structures for you without the need for code.
    You’re able to use the tool’s drag-and-drop feature to create, debug, and manage complex data integration tasks. Astera also natively connects to a variety of database providers including SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2.
    To ensure your data is of the highest quality, there’s built-in data cleansing, data profiling, and data quality options — and to improve accuracy, there are built-in transformations that remove duplicate records, complete missing information, and get rid of redundant data. You’ll get flagged and receive emails if and when your data records don’t meet the high-quality data standards.
    Use Data Mapping on Your Team
    Data mapping has the power to ensure your marketing team and business as a whole get the most out of your data. It also helps you maintain high-quality data and automate the processes of data integration, transfer, migration, and more. Determine which technique you’ll use and if you need a tool to get started with data mapping on your team.

  • Digital customer journey: a comprehensive guide

    Over the past two years, the digital customer journey became the backbone of a successful business. Most companies quickly understood the need to embrace digital channels of communication with customers to stay relevant and competitive. At CXM, we have unique access to hundreds of successful and less victorious stories. One thing became clear to us…
    The post Digital customer journey: a comprehensive guide appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • We get what the business model wants

    The model for TV in the 1960s was three major networks supported by mass advertising. And so the shows that were produced were banal, reassuring and fairly inexpensive to produce. The goal was simply to keep someone from watching the other two channels.

    The business model in the Netflix age, with multiple streaming channels racing to gain market share among affluent consumers with a surfeit of choice, is fundamentally different. And as a result, so is the content being produced.

    It’s not that the TV people wanted to watch suddenly changed–it’s that the economic model for delivering it did.

    The business model for news has changed, and so the news has. Not what’s happening in the world, but the way the internet reports it.

    The business model for all the lifestyle (health, gossip, etc.) filler we see has changed as well. And so it goes…

    And for many people, the biggest change is this: the business model of social networks has replaced the simple act of being in community.